Thursday, 8 May 2014 00:00
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Says progress on reconciliation moving far too slowly
Strong domestic process of reconciliation with Tamils would reduce diaspora influence
Proscription of 16 Tamil orgs: evidence a basic pre-condition for action by EU
By Dharisha Bastians
Failure to cooperate with the UN Human Rights Council inquiry set up to probe allegations of gross human rights violations in the last seven years of the war would ‘lead somewhere,’ the European Union has warned, stressing the seriousness of the moves to hold Sri Lanka to account in Geneva.
The EU Head of Delegation in Sri Lanka Ambassador David Daily told the Daily FT that it was too soon to speculate on the consequences of the Sri Lankan Government’s refusal to cooperate with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which would conduct the probe mandated by the 47 member Council in March this year.
“The failure to cooperate with the OHCHR would have to lead somewhere, because this is the world’s Human Rights Council that has adopted this resolution. So I would stress the serious nature of the issue and very much hope Sri Lanka will agree to cooperate,” Ambassador Daily said in an interview.
“It would be a shame if there was no engagement; it is also an opportunity for Sri Lanka to get its message across,” he explained.
The EU member states formed the bulk of the 42 co-sponsors of the US-led resolution in Geneva earlier this year that established an OHCHR investigation into alleged violations by both sides of the Sri Lankan conflict.
Ambassador Daly said that accountability and human rights progress was intrinsically linked to reconciliation.
“The Government of Sri Lanka is indeed addressing many of the LLRC recommendations. This is good. But it is also slow. The sort of reports I get from ground level indicate that it is going far too slowly. It will be good to tackle that more vigorously,” he said.
Rejecting the claim in certain sections of the Sri Lankan press that the EU was after regime change in Sri Lanka as “outlandish,” Ambassador Daly said the influence of the Tamil diaspora lobby on EU member states was greatly exaggerated.
“One way for Sri Lanka to reduce the influence of the diaspora would be to undertake a strong domestic process of reconciliation with the Tamils in Sri Lanka,” the EU Ambassador noted.
A political settlement was “critical” to long-term reconciliation, Ambassador Daly said.
“We understand that the President is keenly interested in the reconciliation process in South Africa. We welcome that. We hope it can inspire Sri Lanka in its own domestic political process. But this is something which is needed and it must address the underlying grievances that exist,” he observed.
The EU Head of Delegation acknowledged that the Government’s claim about the resurgence of terrorism in the North should not be treated lightly, but insisted the threat had to be “seriously evaluated”.
“Security issues are perfectly legitimate. But everything has to be in a certain balance. Nothing should be exaggerated out of that balance. The Government has made it clear that it has acted in a way to nip terrorist activity in the bud. And if that is true, then nobody would argue with that,” Daly said.
He added that being provided evidence would be a basic precondition for EU member states to act on the Government’s recent ban on 16 Tamil diaspora organisations operating in Europe.
“It is one thing for the Government of Sri Lanka to have reached a conclusion that there is evidence that is so compelling that it can list these organisations. But those organisations are totally legal in European countries. For a European Government to change that position, it would need also to be convinced by the evidence which the Government of Sri Lanka will share,” the Ambassador noted.
